The present invention relates to an optical head that forms latent images on a photosensitive material in an electrophotographic printer, copier, or the like.
An optical head that irradiates with exposure light of a specific pattern at a high speed in order to form an electrostatic latent image on a precharged photosensitive material is used in image formation devices such as printers and copiers.
Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application S61-182966 (Patent Document 1) discloses an image formation device with which a plurality of light emitting elements are arranged in a sub-scanning direction and recording is performed a plurality of times at the same position on a photosensitive material, the result being that printing speed can be raised without increasing the length of a single light emission duration, even when using light emitting elements with a low light emission output.
This image formation device has storage means for storing m×n pieces of image data, and performs n-number of multiple exposures by repeating n times the steps of (A) inputting one row of m pieces of image data to the storage means, (B) lighting a recording array head according to the image data stored in the storage means, and recording an electrostatic latent image on a photosensitive drum, and (C) shifting one row of the image data in the storage means to the next row.